Here was one, the poet seemed to say, who could well execute the villainies he had been taught. He therefore produced a character dramatically consistent, but at the same time he did an everlasting injury to the Jew, because he produced a character altogether historically untrue. The Jew is anything but vindictive; he forgets injuries readily; that is why he is so optimistic; he has a horror of shedding blood, and whatever vices the Jew may be capable of, the one of ferocious cruelty cannot be saddled upon him. Nevertheless, the word Shylock has become in English speech synonymous with everything that is bad. This injustice in literature will persist until some great genius possessing the broad-mindedness of a Lessing and the dramatic power of a Shakespeare shall arise among English-speaking people and create an English Nathan the Wise. The Western world's creed centers in an event which, strictly speaking, belongs to the same category as that of the killing of Socrates, the burning of Giordano Bruno, and of Servetus. Thus, classic Greek, Catholic, and Protestant were all equally guilty of sacrificing the best of their time. The progress of mankind has, sad to say, often been purchased by the martyrdom of some of the noblest men that walked on earth. Yet it is the Jewish people that have been singled out to be held up to the world as Deicides, and every child at the time when the soul is most receptive is inoculated with an antipathy against every living Jew because of an event that took place nineteen hundred years ago. It is therefore no wonder that the world is prejudiced against the Jew. MANDATES OF ART TO HER VOTARIES. A Great Word-Artist Shows That Under the Levity of Bohemian Life Is a Serious and Lofty Philosophy. The late Lafcadio Hearn was one of the great prose-poets of the time. The glimpse into his intimate mind which the _Critic_ affords by printing a sheaf of his letters to H.E. Krehbiel, the music critic, will be appreciated by all who followed his literary wanderings up to the time of his settlement in Japan. The letters were written many years ago, when Hearn was still in his early prime. When he learned of the death of Mr. Krehbiel's child he wrote this exquisite expression of sympathy: Your letter rises before me as I write like a tablet of white stone bearing a dead name. I see you standing beside me. I look into your eyes and press your hand and say nothing. Hearn was ever an artist, and he ever knew what art meant. In advising his friend to break away from the exhausting routine of daily journalism, he gave a typical expression of his philosophy of life: